Quick Testing Tip Du Jour

A coworker admires my attention to detail, as observed by him in my testing that an old application still works after migrating it to a new server. He wondered whether I’d have time to help him test the various web forms on a set of pages he had just migrated to another new server. I gave him this one tip, which he felt was worth several hours of work possibly saved:

Continue reading

Keep Pants Cuffs in Your Snow Boots

If you are in the northeast US you are sick of snow right now, but still slogging your way to work somehow. I got a new pair of mid-height insulated boots, but unless I added gaiters over the top my pants cuffs kept popping out, getting wet and letting in cold air.

Untucked cuff

I found the solution in my bicycling gear: pants cuff straps!

Mine are like the above: flexible straps fastened by Velcro. Wrapping the cuff before inserting your foot into the boot keeps it nicely tucked in while walking:

tucked

Hassle-Free Comcast Cancellation

I’ve been over my head with packing/purging/moving to our new house, but here’s a quick tip:

You may recall last summer a recording of a Comcast customer’s frustrating attempt to get their service cancelled went viral. With that in mind I volunteered to try cancelling our old house’s service since I’m better at dealing with BS than my partner. I just did so, and not only had no hassles but found we didn’t need to stand in line at a service center to return the set top box and remote either! Here’s the trick:

Continue reading

Flashback Friday: Avoid Reposting Urban Legends

 

How to Avoid Reposting Urban Legends

You’ve seen the emails and Facebook posts from your friends:

  • OMG – this famous actor just died!
  • Please take these actions to protect my Facebook privacy.
  • Watch out for this new computer virus!!!
  • A friend of a friend woke up in the bathtub with his kidney missing!!!!!

Frequently followed by a request to repost/forward to all of your friends.

But before you do that, take this step in order to avoid passing on an Urban Legend:

Continue reading